


More Said of This Matter

by Saentorine



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Boats and Ships, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Dwarves, Elves, Existential Angst, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Past Character Death, Romantic Friendship, Sailing, Sailing To Valinor, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-29 22:13:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18302894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saentorine/pseuds/Saentorine
Summary: Legolas hasn't accustomed himself to grieving mortals and he doesn't know much about ships (yet), but after the passing of Aragorn, he's not leaving for the West without Gimli.





	More Said of This Matter

_But when King Elessar gave up his life Legolas followed at last the desire of his heart and sailed over the sea. We have heard tell that Legolas took Gimli Glóin's son with him because of their great friendship, greater than any that has been between Elf and Dwarf. If this is true, then it is strange indeed: that a Dwarf should be willing to leave Middle-earth for any love, or that the Eldar should receive him, or that the Lords of the West should permit it. But it is said that Gimli went also out of desire to see again the beauty of Galadriel; and it may be that she, being mighty among the Eldar, obtained this grace for him. More cannot be said of this matter._

from _Return of the King_ , Appendix A

***

For all the long years of his life, Legolas was still a child to grief.

It was the mark of mortals, perhaps, to be so familiar with death as to accept it gracefully. Gimli would never forget his father’s return from the journey to Erebor with the news of his cousins’ passing, the terrible revelation that Kíli, Fíli, and Thorin would never return home themselves. His heart had suffered profoundly: days of waking up believing for a moment the news had been but a dream, moments of certainty that there must have been some mistake, hours of bitter rage toward his surviving relations and the gods alike for the injustice of them having been taken from the world-- until finally he had made peace with the truth. Death would never be easy, but it could be accepted. 

Despite the centuries of his lifespan, mortality was new to Legolas. He had known loss in the millennia of his lifetime, but Boromir had been his first brush with true, permanent death. Legolas had not seemed to grasp at first that Boromir’s soul had taken leave beyond the physical world where Elves would spend their eternity. Although their companion’s river-borne funeral carriage might take him to the sea, it would not cross it, and there would be no glad reunion one day in the West. 

Far worse was the dawning understanding that Aragorn, too, would one day meet this fate. In the peace of the new age of Men, the longevity of his bloodline unthreatened by war, for a time it had seemed as if that day would never come. But the years passed and Aragorn’s hair had faded silver, his skin became wrinkled and delicate, and finally his body failed, his soul departing to claim the gift of Men.

It had disturbed Legolas especially that when they inquired after Arwen in hopes as her husband’s companions they might share some comfort in their loss together, Eldarion had told them of her solitary departure for the long-abandoned forest of her kin, sealing the doom she had chosen.

For all the peace with which Aragorn and Arwen had accepted their fate, this last confrontation with death brought Legolas nothing but restlessness.

“It is time,” he concluded. “The age of the Elves has long passed.”

Legolas had feared the prophecy of Galadriel when it had been told to him, but from the moment he had heard the cry of the gulls he had accepted it not as doom but destiny, assuring in its certainty. In the years he had dwelt in Ithilien among his dwindling people, he had pushed it from the forefront of his mind, but the sea-longing remained an ever-present needling like a splinter buried beneath the skin. This resolution kindled that ember into a flame that could not be suppressed.

Gimli watched as Legolas pursued his mission like one possessed. He knew it was the nature of his people from time to time to adopt some new preoccupation to consume their passion-- a new craft, a new artistic pursuit, some sudden new obsession with history or mapmaking-- lest their minds decay in their long years, but he had never seen it quite this extreme. His companion was practically manic; it made Gimli exhausted just to watch him and at times he considered slipping some longbottom leaf into the Elf’s meals just to enforce a little rest.

But Legolas was still capable of such unyielding diligence. Despite his age in years his body was still at the height of youth, his face beardless and smooth-skinned with his lean muscles still in the peak condition of a soldier. He appeared not a day older than he had been as his father’s messenger in Rivendell, nervously bearing the news of their escaped prisoner.

However, despite the intensity of his effort Gimli wasn’t sure he’d call the first results of the Elf’s industry a _ship_. Certainly he didn’t know much of ships and seafaring, the sea being far from a Dwarf’s most familiar element, but the modest vessel he built by warping pine beams over the bole of fallen tree seemed more fit for a lake than the great sea.

“Are you certain you know what you’re doing?” Gimli asked, trying not to sound too discouraging, as he watched Legolas hammer wooden pegs in place and fill the gaps with resin.

“I’ve been around boats, Gimli,” Legolas huffed impatiently. “Remember the Anduin? And we had river rafts in the Greenwood.”

“Aye, you’ve known little skiffs to carry ferry you around inland water-- not exactly seafaring vessels. And manning a boat is one thing but building one quite another.”

Gimli kept his distance the first day Legolas took his vessel down to the water, waiting higher up on the banks to spare him a witness to the inevitable. The Elf could swim just fine, especially in the shallow waters; Gimli needn’t rub salt into the wound. 

Sure enough, Legolas returned shortly with the boat notably absent, trying his very best to look as if he had just returned from a simple walk down to the water. In the early days of their friendship, Gimli might not have been able to tell he was wet, but many of the Elves’ secrets had been made clear to him in their years together. Legolas walked with a stiff gait and was clearly soaked.

“How was the journey West?” Gimli grinned as Legolas tramped back up the side of the bank.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Legolas tried the wood of a different tree for the next attempt but fared no better. Then he changed tack and ran experiments with samples of all kinds of wood and treatments, testing which would float and hold cargo on a small scale before risking his labor-- and dignity-- on another failure. The execution of patience at this point in his resolve was painful, but necessary.

Finally, two seasons after they had bid farewell to Aragorn, Legolas had a functioning ship.

The chill of autumn was heavy in the air when he pushed her into the water and paddled her in circles around the bright water of the Anduin, rocking her to and fro and occasionally jumping to mimic the motion of the higher seas. Gimli watched from the bank, applauding the apparent success at long last.

Seeing his companion perched on the bank, flanked by the orange and red leaves of high autumn, Legolas realized he had not yet grasped how age had advanced upon him. They had seldom been apart during their travels and long years in Ithilien and the change had taken place slowly. Gimli now had the look of a Dwarven patriarch, his once-red beard completely silver. Though through his active life he had maintained good health and strength, he had not avoided the paunch in his middle that marked the age of his race, nor the heavy wrinkles around his eyes and spots on his hands. His father had passed some decades before; Gimli did not have much time left by the usual reckoning of his people.

“We should leave before the last of the leaves have fallen,” Legolas concluded, returning to shore and typing up his vessel. “Before ice comes to the rivers and the winds are high over the sea.”

“We?”

“I am not leaving you behind to the fate of mortals.”

Gimli almost laughed at the audacity of it. What authority did Legolas have to defy the laws of the Valar? If Gimli was meant for any part of the West, it would be in the halls of Mandos reserved for his kin, according to their tales.

But Legolas fixed on him a gaze of certainty, resolve as intense as that to build his ship in the first place.

“You’re serious.”

Legolas nodded. “We are not departing from Mithlond on Círdan’s grey ships you would be forbidden to board. I am taking you aboard a ship of my own making; I decide who shall accompany me. And I shall not step upon the shores of the West without you.”

There it was again: that bitter refusal to accept mortality. Perhaps it was dangerous to humor the denial of his grief for so long, to allow him to believe that he could simply deny death-- or that reaching those shores would even delay what for a Dwarf could not be evaded. It was one thing to thumb his nose at the rules of his kin that had made the journey before, but to spit on the natural order of death itself?

And yet . . . what was the cost of the risk at this point? To the children of his kin Gimli was already a relic, something more of legend than belonging to the peaceful present-- and in the natural order of things they would be losing him soon either way. He was old now, old as his folk were permitted to get, and in the ways of all elders he longed most to be in the company of those who shared the memories of his lifetime. Legolas was the last soul east of the sea who had shared in their great journey of the last age; when he departed there would be no one else who understood.

And he should like to see Galadriel again. Would she still remember him fondly? Was she pleased with the work he had done in restoring the southern woodlands after the great war? Did she ever regret blessing him with entrance to her sacred realm, and the gift she had given him? 

Weary as he was becoming, Gimli had in his heart room for one last great adventure with his companion-- despite and perhaps because of the poor odds, like the journey that had originally brought them together.

“Ah, what’s the worst that could happen, they turn us back?” he chortled, grinning in acceptance of the proposal. Besides, on the shores of the West he would only be that much closer to the Halls of Mandos should he be diverted there. 

Legolas’s bitter resolve thawed into a smile and he held out a hand to help his friend board the ship, though Gimli struggled to stand in the rocking hull even as it remained tied to shore. Legolas pointed out the essential features of the craft, elegant in their simplicity: the triangular sail and the sheet to mind it; the deep rudder with a long tiller carved in the rustic style of Legolas’s people; the curved wooden keel that poked below the hull like the fin of a fish. He demonstrated how the sail could be lashed to the mast in the event of a storm, the rope replaced in case of a break, and the sail repaired should it develop a hole.

“It’s small and simple as it can be, as we won’t have the crew fit for the ships of the like Círdan built,” he explained. “Either of us ought to be able to man both tiller and sheet himself while the other takes a rest.”

Gimli nodded, impressed at the mechanics neither of them had known anything of-- and Gimli still didn’t-- but which Legolas had committed himself to learn in only a few months’ time.

“It seems you’ve got a seaworthy craft at last. But this is not like our journey on the Anduin where we could stop along the banks when we pleased,” he pointed out. “You propose to let the sun beat down on us and our provisions unprotected the entire time?-- and to let everything roll about the bottom of the boat in the waves of the sea?”

Legolas’s face fell as he gazed at his modest vessel in consideration of Gimli’s concerns. “We’re _not_ ready to depart, are we?”

It was then Legolas’s turn to watch, impatient as he was, as Gimli worked diligently on the interior details of the ship: locked drawers and cabinets for protecting their supplies against the violence of the rolling waves, and fastenings for securing a tarp over the hull when it rained or they slept. Even in his practical haste he could not resist adding details in the style of his own kin, so that the result was a fusion of Elven and Dwarven style unseen since the doors of Durin.

Finally, in the last days before the first frost of the season, their ferry to the West was well and truly complete.

“So this is it, then. We simply paddle down the Anduin and out to sea?”

“Unless you’d like to take the long way through the Greenwood and give my father one last opportunity to make the journey,” Legolas smirked.

“Oh aye, that’s just the sort of traveling companion I’d like to cram aboard a craft built for two souls,” Gimli snorted. “Though I suppose I’d arrive well-practiced to withstand the judgement of the rest of your folk.”

“You know my father likes to make an entrance,” Legolas’s eyes were sparkling. “Maybe then you could sneak in unnoticed.”

Gimli sniffed. He had been the first of his people to see the innermost sanctum of Lothlorien and had been bestowed a gift thrice denied an Elven prince. (He had not known the significance when he had made his request of Galadriel, but Legolas had since made him understand the importance in the eyes of the Eldar). He would walk proudly into Valinor, thank you very much.

They let the river take them downstream, recalling the companions that had paddled upriver with them years before, including the one that had taken their same journey in death. They reached the mouth of the Anduin and the sea lay before them in all her great and terrible scale. Setting sail, Legolas’s eyes were bright with the thrill of the open sea and of harnessing the wind to his wishes, trimming his sail to tack most efficiently towards their mark when the wind was not behind them.

Gimli was not quite as thrilled, at first. By sunset he began to wish he had never set foot on board. The sea was in constant motion, nothing like the steady, certain earth. A Dwarf’s stomach was not built for such upheaval and the bit of dried meat and cram from their provisions-- the secrets of _lembas_ having been long ago been taken across the sea with Galadriel and her folk-- he had nibbled earlier in the day was given to the spray of the waves. There was no reprieve even as the vast sky faded purple and Legolas suggested he sleep-- for the waves did not sleep themselves. He tried for a few minutes to lie on his back and imagine the rolling and yawing were but a pleasant hammock strung between trees in Ithilien (a sleeping arrangement he’d allowed the Elf to introduce him to and eventually found he quite liked) until it quickly became clear it was far more convenient to be inches from the gunwales at all times.

“Perhaps you should take a turn at the tiller,” Legolas suggested.

“Oh aye; everyone knows the best captains are spilling their bellies as they go.” 

“It will help,” he promised, helping pull him into position and keeping his hands close, lest Gimli’s fail. 

It did help somewhat, his own hands linked to the motion of the boat even as it was tossed at the will of the sea, but Gimli now understood exactly why his ancestors had never been seafaring people and vowed that he’d never take such a journey again-- if such a thing were possible anyway.

“Our course should be towards just where the sun set on the horizon,” Legolas assured him. “Though at some point we will leave it.”

“Leave it? Leave what?”

“The horizon,” he explained. “When the Valar sunk Númenor into the sea, they parted the Undying Lands from the surface of the earth so that no mortal could sail there.”

“Wait,” Gimli’s mouth went dry and he feared another bout leaning over the gunwales. Why did the Elf always wait until he was past the point of backing out to impart these details? “We’re _leaving the surface of the earth_?”

“It won’t seem as such to us,” he explained. “As far as the songs say, it will seem as if we are crossing an invisible bridge.”

“A bridge straight into the heavens! A flying ship!” he cried in bewilderment. “Will we even be able to breathe up there?”

“You have never suffered from the thin air in the mountains,” Legolas reminded him. “I’m sure you will be fine.” 

“And then what? Head for the nearest star?”

“Oh, it is not nearly that far,” Legolas laughed, as if this were somehow more absurd than their modest earthbound craft taking flight. “We shall cross through a veil of rain, which is said to be like passing through silver glass--"

“A veil of _glass_?” Gimli had a vivid image of plunging headlong into solid crystal. “I’ve seen birds confront panes of glass, and I daresay a Dwarf careening into one won’t fare much better.”

“Well-- it is said to part, like a curtain,” Legolas replied thoughtfully, wracking his brain for forgotten tidbits of the songs he referred to. Gimli inwardly cursed not only his lack of forethought but his poor memory for lyrics.

“For the Elves, maybe. Perhaps that is how they keep out everyone else!”

“I’m sure it will not keep _you_ out. After all, you passed into Lothlórien against all law and precedent.”

“Only because Aragorn made you all go blindfolded along with me,” replied Gimli, eyes twinkling at the memory of how it had vexed Legolas at the time. “Perhaps that’s the key.”

“If you think I’d navigate to Valinor better with a blindfold . . . “

Gimli finally tired enough to drift into a deathlike sleep and woke to the brilliance of a morning sky ablaze in red and orange, unmoored from any tree or mountain. The land they had left was no longer in sight. However, by evening the sky had transformed into something much less beautiful. It fell dark as night and deep rumbles thundered across the expanse of black water. Clouds grew to fell towers, calling the waves to great white peaks to meet them. 

Legolas climbed the mast, gripping it with crossed legs in the way of his folk at home in the trees, hands free to lash the sail down to ride out the winds, when a sudden downburst sent the vessel spinning and flung him to the waves. Gimli felt his stomach turn again, but seized an oar and heaved it over the side for him to cling to until he could get his bearings well enough to climb back aboard. They huddled under the loose tarpaulin, the winds too high to risk tying it as a roof, lest it fly away instead. 

“Perhaps we’ll arrive sooner and by different means than expected,” said Legolas through gasps of shock from the cold water, seeming for the first time fearful for the success of their journey. 

But the worst of the storm passed them at some distance, its immense black clouds and bursts of lightning towering like the flames of Mordor that had once shadowed their lands but failed to consume them.

As the days passed, no land in sight from either side, Gimli’s stomach habituated to the rocking of the boat as well as the vicissitudes of the wind, guessing when the gusts would rise and when he might trim or release the sail to make use of them. He took more time at the tiller so that Legolas could climb the mast and seek land with his better vision.

“There is something!” Legolas eventually cried. 

It was not long before Gimli saw it as well; a great shadow of rain looming before them, and at first he panicked, thinking of the earlier storm. However, this time there was a still sweetness in the air that did not threaten.

“This is the crossing,” Legolas gasped, swiftly descending from his perch.

As Legolas took the tiller, Gimli quickly hitched up some of the loose end of the sheet, wrapping it around his waist and across his shoulders several times. When Legolas quirked an eyebrow at him he explained: “The ship’s not crossing anything without me on it.”

“Do you suppose we ought to blindfold you as well?” Legolas teased as he sat next to him and wound the last of the rope around a cleat. “For tradition’s sake, if nothing else?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that; I’m not planning to open my eyes!”

The two companions both laid their hands on the tiller, one on top of the other. Gimli heaved in a great final breath, as if the air would be lost once the ship lifted from the water, and they passed into the shrouding rain.

The mist settled around them for a few moments, cool and comforting, smelling of a peaceful morning in a new-made world, purer than a forest rain. Finally, it dissipated to reveal a sky and sea far bluer than either had ever seen, and the barest glimpse of a lush green landscape ringed by white shores. Both were breathless and speechless for several moments.

Legolas nodded towards the unknown horizon, the hollow in his soul that had been the sea-longing instantly filled at the sight of this foreign terrain. “We made it.”

“Almost,” replied Gimli, pointing out the rocks barricading the pristine beaches, almost as if they had been set there intentionally. “How do you propose we pass those?”

Legolas shrugged again, confident in having made the journey so far. “We know there has to be a harbor somewhere.”

“Maybe there’s been a shift in the terrain since the last ship got here. The last _authorized_ ship.”

“Wait,” Legolas paused, holding up a hand to silence them both. “Do you hear that?”

Gimli nodded; he thought he had heard distant singing from the moment they had passed beyond the rain, but figured perhaps it was just the effect of the magic in the place. The singing was haunting and otherworldly as he expected in an Elven realm-- but rather than the chorus of voices he remembered grieving in Lothlórien, it seemed to belong to a solitary voice.

“If there’s voices, there’s bound to be souls,” he agreed. “Though who knows what souls they might turn out to be.”

They met eyes in agreement and Legolas brought the sail about so they could dart south along the coast, chasing the sound of those who would welcome them into the West.

**Author's Note:**

> When Legolas is telling Gimli he’s coming with him I’m just picturing him all Moana like “I am Legolas of the Greenwood! You will board my boat, sail across the sea, and restore the hairs of Galadriel!!”
> 
> Given the setup this may or may not turn into more chapters about their adventures in the West, but for now it's standing alone as a one shot.


End file.
